


hurting

by stylesoul



Series: Surviving [1]
Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Depression, F/F, Healing, One Shot Collection, Self-Destruction, TW: suicidal thoughts, no Lexa in the prequel, sets after 2X16, she's only mentionned
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-28 06:37:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11412327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stylesoul/pseuds/stylesoul
Summary: One-shots of Clarke wandering in the woods after 2x16. It's sort of a prequel to Healing.I write these O.S according to my inspiration, and I can't promise you that they will be in chronological order.And, unlike Healing, I don't care for the length of the one-shots, they can be really long or under a thousand words.





	1. Mount Weather

    She needed to leave, needed the souvenirs and the reminders to be far away from her, needed to escape for her people, to avoid burdening them and threatening their lives. So she left. She abandoned them and left them on their own to sort out and come out from what just happened. She walked away like the coward that she was and begged for the Universe to protect them and guide them, because she no longer could bear that role.  
    She didn't know where she was heading to, didn't know what she had in her pockets, didn't care. She seemed to be carried away by a force, let her feet lead her to their destination while trying to be aware of her surroundings but it seemed that her mind would not let her. But the more she walked, the more she sensed eyes piercing holes through the back of her head and she knew, she just knew who it was because she felt the same way back when the alliance was building. _And now it no longer exists._ But she kept quiet and kept on walking. She grabbed berries she knew were safe to eat, and throw them back down when she hesitated and the branches of a tree would move. It was his way of preventing her from poison, and she accepted it in silence.  
    When Clarke seemed to be in control of her body again, her feet stopped marching, her stomach was full and her body unarmed. But her spirit broke all over again as her eyes scanned the mountain standing ahead of her. She knew it too well, had learned its every entrance, its every hallway. She believed nothing could surprise her anymore but then she was facing the site and it crushed her. The raw, hunting smell of Death hit her like a pauna, it brought realness to the events, forced tears to flow down her cheeks but she marched again until she reached the tunnel and opened its doors. She didn't look around but marched towards the only place that interested her: level 5.  
When she reached that damned level, her eyes starting burning from the smell. She bent over and puked her whole stomach and even more. A hand against the wall, she tried to get her lungs to function normally before continuing. I have to do this. She straightened up and marched towards her fate. She passed by classrooms which's walls were plastered with posters and art, classrooms which buzzed with the energy of young kids not even 24 hours ago. A bit farther was another place of education she had stained, another place that would not, could not be used anymore. And then she went to the hell she created only a few hours ago and opened its doors.  
    There were bodies everywhere. No matter where she looked, no matter where she tried not to look. They were there, forever impregnating themselves into Clarke's self, leaving a stain she wasn't sure she could ever wash. The bodies that once held a spirit, a soul and everything that built them no longer appeared human. They looked like monsters, holes spread over their body, eyeballs out, bones showing and their screams and pain printed on their face. She started left and counted every bodies. It seemed to never end. To see the children's face distort with the radiations was the most unbearable experience she'd ever encountered. And before she reached the final number hanging above her head like the sword of Damoclès, Clarke was a trembling mess. She was the aftermath of Death itself, destroyed by its seed. _366_. An entire people dead before her in a matter of seconds, a genocide perpetrated and ordered by her hands.

**

   Abby always told her that a body, once stripped from life, was cold and hard as a rock, heavy with Death. And now, as Clarke clung onto the arms in her hands to pull this body out of this graveyard, she wished she'd never had to verify her words. But Life thought differently. It was the fifteenth body she'd pull out and laid on the ground and almost an hour already passed. She looked into the tree she knew, for unknown reasons, that he was perched onto and spoke with a raspy voice.

"- Come help me."

   It took them five hours to pull the three hundred and sixty-six bodies and put them on the home-made pyres Ryder made, and two more hours for the corpses to finally burn and for their soul to escape their trapped cages. Clarke watched the three pyres burn in front of her, and saw Ryder retreat back to the trees. She knew where he was heading to, silently begged for him to spread the news that no one should cross her path or they'd be met with the adversity of death.  
    She was a danger, a death sentence to the world. She could not be touched, could not be reached. She was a gifted poison, a monster with the appearance of an angel.

 


	2. Knife

    She played with the knife. Its tip piercing the first barrier of her skin as the warmth of the fire engulfed her, never reaching the cold abyss of her being and suffering. She played with the knife gifted to her for unknown reasons by a woman inhabiting a village she'd crossed, while trying not to let her mind wander to a place she did not want it to be. But as she felt blood escaping from her shell, her eyes closed and she saw _her_. High up and mighty on this throne that was intimidating on its own, hair braided and sprawled out onto her shoulders, a war paint so dark it would forever be inked into Clarke's memory. The knife dug a bit more into her shoulder and she saw _her_ playing with it, green eyes so fierce and cold that often found themself into her nightmares, or were they ? A tear fell on the moss as the weapon tore her skin, green eyes embedded in her spirit and oh, she wished. She wished she could find that anger again, wished she could resent her for the things _she_ 'd forced her to do, but had _she_ ? Because going into The Mountain even though she was all alone anymore was not forced onto her, because the genocide of an entire population was not forced onto her either. Because the deep, blind trust she had poured into _her_ had not been necessary. So could that hatred and anger be justified ? The knife dug more and she let it fall off her back, a hiss escaping her gritted teeth and she realized the only faulty here, was herself. And perhaps she always knew, but for weeks directing it towards that woman she would not, could not speak her name was the only thing that kept her sane. Blood streamed down her back like an overflowed river after a storm, destroying everything to shred more than it did good. The blonde knew it would attract animal, knew she should care but the void that had settled into her being swallowed her reason. She heard someone drop off a tree but did not move. She'd sensed his eyes boring into her back for weeks now, and she was used to it.  
So when Ryder carried her bride-like to the village she'd spent the night in twenty-four hours ago, all that she did was close her eyes.

**

    Clarke woke up on her stomach, hushed trigedasleng being spoken in her back but she still did not move. The Trikru were observing people and a few seconds later the noise stopped and the woman that gave her the knife approached the bed she was laying in.

"- _Wanheda_ , I did not give you the knife for you to order your own death.  
\- I was not. Don't you have kill marks for your killings ?" The woman stared at her, or at least the side of her head before speaking.  
"- There is not enough space on your back to mark them all." Clarke clenched her jaw.  
"- I know. But if one is deeper or longer that another, surely it means something, right ?  
\- Kill marks are often made with one slash to signify one death, but when there are too many at a time, a design is forged and burned into the back." Clarke sat up and put on the shirt folded next to her.  
"- I need more than one design, then."

**

    Clarke laid on the wooden table, a gag between her mouth while she awaited for the man to mark her. She'd asked him to forge a large mountain, surrounded by three trees and a bridge. Above it was a large circle falling down, and Clarke felt like she was suffocating. Three hundred and sixty-six deaths at Mount Weather, three hundred and twenty-eight deaths at the drop ship including her own, dozens of death at the bridge and two hundred and sixty-four deaths at TonDC. She felt the weight of each corpse, each soul she'd sucked out, each family she'd broken up. There were times where she would look into the fire and see forms of burned bodies dancing, screaming, begging to be avenged. There were nights where she'd lay on the grounds, bare and vulnerable, and she'd feel thousands of eyes on her body, scrutinizing her, depriving her from sleep and silence. She felt herself getting heavier by the seconds, unable to move, crushed by waves of hatred and thirst for something she was not yet ready to give.  
     The first brand that was marked onto her left shoulder blade was the Mountain, high up and mighty. It was as big as a hand, yet it was both destructive and insufficient. She screamed into her throat, bit down on the gag as the thin shaped-iron lingered on her skin and the smell of burning flesh reached her nose. The woman from the village had told her that pain-killers were forbidden because each death had to be felt and remembered, but Clarke hadn't had the audacity to tell her that even if they were allowed, she would have refused them. And even then, as the three trees were embedded onto her skin, on the left of the Mountain, she didn't wish for the pain to go away. This was a reminder of the pain she'd inflicted to the nine hundred and seventy-four people she's killed in the apparently only way she knew how to: by burning people alive, by ripping them off of their sanity and dignity.  
     By the time the fourth design was etched onto her epidermis, Clarke filled up an entire bucket of puke. A cold pomade was applied onto her raw shoulder and she was carried away, too weak to walk, too damaged to even try to.

 

 


	3. Glowing forest

    She was in a field of glowing plants, their fluorescent lights reflecting on her pearl skin and she longed for her father to be there. She longed for his unwavering hope and advice, she longed for his hugs that would occur without any particular occasion. She longed for his smile, his warmth, his presence. She couldn't help imagine how it all would have been different. She would still be pure, never would have experienced the kind of cruelty that she did experience on the ark, never would have experienced isolation, hunger and thirst. Wells would still be here, that feeling of shame and guilt would not be stuck to her stomach. She would never have been on the ground in the conditions that she did, would have remained somewhat stainless and this thought, somehow, felt wrong.  
     Earth provided her a feeling of belonging, a feeling of home. She would lose herself into the never-ending forest, soaking in the scent of pines and wild life. There was a feeling of complete and utter freedom that the Delinquents hadn't been and still weren't able to shake away. The quality of life provided by this planet, provoked them to _feel_ and to _be_. And yet, as she soaked in this moment of quietness in this place that felt lost in time, untouched by blood and humankind, that reunited everything Clarke thought a haven was, she couldn't forget. Everything in this field reminded her of their first days and hours on this land that was harsher than it let it out to be. She wanted to go back to these times of foolishness, but there was just _so much_ blood now. There was so much blood around her it formed a bottomless sea of red in which she was in the middle, unable to kick, unable to swim from the thickness of it all. She was drowning in an ocean of violence and screams she could not fathom how to get out of. She so wished believing her father was proud of her would ease her sleep at night, but the truth was, there was no pride in merciless killings and favoring a way which enforced the most durable and hard agony. There was nothing to help her ease her demons because she knew her father, Jake, a man who favored hope, aid and generosity, would disapprove every single one of her choices. And thus, the only comfort she could find was in the fact that he was _not_ there. He was not there and couldn't witness the way his daughter had changed. He was not there and couldn't witness the blood and the killings and the endless wars.  
     Clarke laid down and looked at the sky. She was up there a few months ago, in the constellation which held a metal box that felt very much like a prison, locked up in a cage inside of a cage. And if they had waited just one more week, she'd have been executed by now. Executed and away, executed for believing in justice and in people. Executed for believing in her father. And perhaps it would have been for the better. The dull ache of emptiness and void that had settled in her chest a few weeks ago, worsened by the appearence of anxiety attacks, never seemed to lessen but a contrario, kept on weighing her down. How long before she cave in ? How long before the pain is too unendurable for her to bear it anymore ?  
     Her thoughts were interrupted by the whistles of leaves, signaling that Ryder was approaching. She shut her eyes and bathed on more minute into this night that allowed her lungs to breathe and her heart to rest.

"- We need to go.  
\- Why ?  
\- Someone is approaching."

    And so they went, flew away and hid their tracks so the Azgeda warriors would not find them. They walked until the sun began to rise and the Trikru was certain there were no longer any threats. They slept in the trees that shielded them from light but of course, the Sun decided otherwise and protected her child and her savior with her warm and powerful rays.  
     When they woke up during the day, fresh, uncovered marks laid on the ground below them.


End file.
